Dr. Mike Wiese speaks of what he calls "cancer angels." He's encountered them many times since last summer, when he had as tough a meeting as he ever faced with any patient.

Wiese is an orthopedic surgeon. He and his wife Kathleen, who live in Fayetteville, are the parents of four children. Pat, 21, is their youngest son. Baseball is the great passion of his life. He was one of the best high school players in the region when he attended Christian Brothers Academy, and he went on to become an outfielder -- and captain -- for the Le Moyne College team.

Last season, he batted .333 and led the Dolphins in a slew of categories. But his leg began bothering him toward the end of the school year. The pain grew unbearable during the summer, when Pat was playing with the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. He worried he'd torn some cartilage. He came home and asked his father to check his knee.

"A bone bruise," Mike said. "That's all I thought it was." He ran some tests. He looked hard at the results. Then he asked his boy to step into his office. Mike has to stop and gather himself as he recalls the conversation:

The doctor told his son there was cancer in his leg.

"Pretty devastating," said Pat, who learned he has osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

The upshot was clear: He was done playing organized baseball.

Le Moyne baseball standout Pat Wiese with his parents, Mike and Kathleen: During Pat's treatment for cancer, moved by an outpouring of community support.Kevin Rivoli | krivoli@syracuse.com

In early autumn, to remove the tumor, he had knee replacement surgery. In October, he traveled with his parents to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where specialists helped to map out his treatment. He would need chemotherapy. They talked about the schedule.

Pat managed to find humor in that destination. Since childhood, with passion, he's followed the New York Yankees. Boston has always been the nemesis, the fierce rival.

His parents say it isn't really a surprise. At every stop in this journey, the angels keep emerging.

There was a grade school classmate Pat hadn't seen in years, a young woman who heard about his illness and sent him a letter. She was praying for him, she wrote, because she remembered so clearly -- at a point in her childhood when it meant everything -- how Pat was kind to her, every day.

There was the overwhelming response at Le Moyne, where his baseball buddies rallied behind him, where this month's home opener for the men's

Pat Wiese with his parents, at home plate at Fenway Park, World Series 2013.Family photo

basketball team was built around three familiar words on campus: "Pray for Pat." Before the game, his friends and teammates presented Pat with checks worth more than $6,000 to help him start a foundation to battle cancer. He walked onto the court. Everyone in the gym rose and cheered.

Cancer angels? Mike and Kathleen Wiese find them in their own house, where Pat's two brothers showed up in crew cuts before Pat began chemotherapy. They saw it this way: If their little brother could look good wearing his hair that way, why let him be the only one?

That outpouring of love has little to do with baseball, despite Pat's considerable skills.

"To me, he's an exceptional individual," said Tom Dotterer, Pat's high school coach at CBA. "He is an individual utterly devoid of ego. He's a leader in every sense of the word: behavior, effort, support of others. It was a tremendous honor for me just to be around him as a coach."

In October, Pat and his parents made the trip to Dana-Farber, where doctors went over the details of his treatments. The family had a different reason to look ahead: Dr. Bob Ashenburg, a Syracuse radiologist, is a good friend of Mike Wiese's. Bob's son Nick has a friend, Kathryn Quirk, who works in the front office of the Red Sox.

Boston was getting under way with its World Series showdown against St. Louis. Through Nick Ashenburg, Quirk heard about Pat's situation. She offered him tickets to a game. Pat was appreciative, but he was dealing with too much pain. He knew he couldn't sit in Fenway for nine innings.

All right, Quirk said: She'd do the next best thing. She told Pat and his folks they could watch batting practice before a series game. After the Wieses finished their appointment at Dana-Farber, Quirk met them at Fenway, a few hours before the first pitch of Game Two. Quirk led them to a spot near the best seats in the ballpark, where they watched as the Red Sox and Cardinals took their cuts.

Then, a surprise:

"Unbelievable, (but) she's opening a gate and taking us down onto the field," Pat said.

He was getting around on crutches given to him by an uncle, crutches with baseball-styled pads on the top. "When I stepped onto the field," Pat said, "I felt like I was floating."

Former Yankee Manager Joe Torre walked past. So did Chris Berman, the ESPN broadcaster. Pat and his parents looked at the brilliant lights, the green grass, thousands of fans filling the stands.

Once again, they met a cancer angel.

A man in a Red Sox jacket walked over and made an admiring comment about the baseball pads on Pat's crutches. Pat had no idea who this guy might be, but somehow he immediately felt comfortable. He told his story. The man listened. He said he understood.

As a young man, he told Pat, he'd been a standout pitcher in Ohio. His dream, too, had been to make the Major Leagues. One day, as he walked along a street in a little Ohio city, a driver hit the gas when she should have hit the brakes. Her car slammed into the young pitcher. She almost killed him. The force of the collision shattered his knee.

All dreams of playing baseball disappeared. While recovering, the man remembered how his father died when he was a small boy, how his mother somehow rallied to raise her children.

Pat Wiese spraypaints home plate before Game Two of the World Series at Fenway Park, while Dave Mellor, head Boston Red Sox groundskeeper, watches.Family photo

Lose one great love, he told Pat, and you need to find another.

Thirty years later, Dave Mellor is head groundskeeper of the Boston Red Sox. He'd had so many knee surgeries it's easy to lose count, but the perspective he took from all the pain causes him to embrace a little ritual before many Red Sox games:

He'll find someone from the crowd who seems especially fitting. He'll let them paint home plate, prior to the first pitch.

Before the second game of the World Series, when he looked around, he saw Pat.

"Fenway is unique, and it has an aura unlike any other place I've ever worked, and a great part of this job is helping other people create memories," Mellor said.

He asked the Wieses to stand near a dugout, even as game time approached in the World Series. With almost no one left on the field except for umpires and players, Mellor and Pat went to home plate. From the time when he was a little boy, Pat had dreamed of someday standing at that spot. He leaned down and used spray paint to make the plate a glowing white.

Mellor led him to the mound, where Pat used the white paint on the pitching rubber, and the two men also made a quick check on second base.

"I'm out there thinking, 'This isn't Opening Day. This isn't the regular season. This is a World Series game, and I'm at the center of it,' " Pat said.

For a few minutes, in that place, he had no thoughts of cancer.

The separation is harder to find in Syracuse, where Pat is going through his second round of chemotherapy. Still, his parents say what he experienced at Fenway illustrates how the family finds the strength to cope.

"God puts people in your path to remind you this is all about something bigger," Kathleen said. "We've received so many acts of kindness from so many people, and we're so humbled and feel so connected to this whole community.

"I try to tell Pat this all is happening because of who he is. I tell him I'm so fortunate to be his mother, because he's made me a better person, a better friend, and he's shown me so much about living.

"Thankful? Yes. We're so thankful."

As for Pat, he said his cancer has taught him to take nothing for granted. Anything you love can end without warning, he said, and what he loved -- above all else - was playing baseball.

Someday he'll take that passion and put it somewhere else, but for now the one consolation he can find is that when he thinks about baseball, he can tell himself one thing:

"I played as hard as I could every day, every game."

Whatever you love, he said, don't cheat it. You never know about tomorrow.

Mike and Kathleen say that Mellor, the groundskeeper, calls Pat a few times every month, just to check in. "Fenway," Mellor said, "is a very spiritual place," and he's already given Pat a standing invitation: A new season is not so far away, and there's a home plate in Boston that will need some painting.

If Pat could put a game or two on his schedule, Mellor would be thankful.

Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. Write to him in care of The Post-Standard, 220 S. Warren St., Syracuse, 13202, email him at skirst@syracuse.com, visit his blog at www.syracuse.com/kirst or send him an email on Facebook or Twitter.